So here are some random pictures I have taken with my Canon 40D. I used the stock 28 – 135 mm lens with a UV filter and in some cases a ND4 and/ or Polarizer filer. In some cases I also maximized the contrast in the camera’s menu and in other cases I added a color shift. So what do you all think? The first 20 or so pictures were a bit more serious in nature and I specifically tried to make those look as good as possible. The remaining pictures were just pictures I found to be interesting. I threw in a few climbing pics at the end for fun.

Not bad! The kids-in-wave shots are pretty neat. It would be cool to see the people closer up. Two suggestions: don't center the subject you're shooting every time and work on your exposure settings. Good start though.

I'm not opening this thread again. That isn't a comment on the photos, one way or another. Its just the SILLIEST way you could have chosen to display them. Posting them onto Flickr and giving us a link where we could view them one at a time as a slideshow would have made infinitely (and I'm pretty sure I mean that quite literally) more sense than having them all displayed in this thread, one at a time. I have quite a fast connection and its still a royal pain in the arse.

I'm quite serious about not opening this thread again- if you (and thats for ANYBODY reading this thread) have any desire for me to see any response you may have, either PM me or start a new thread.

Over. And out.

P.S.- USN, there really isn't anything to read?!?!?! I swear I saw a novel's worth of text in there somewhere

P.P.S- what IS the deal with hawaii and bolted cracks. i thought all the people who make a huge stank ass deal about bolted cracks on this site were just imagining a theoretical thing that they could rant and piss and moan about. guess i was wrong

It seems like you like to play with the saturation slider in Photoshop, no? Some of them just seem TOO colorful. Also, the climbing shots are great but I would enjoy them more if the subject wasn't looking at the camera in most of them. Looks a bit staged.

I have a general rule, when posting a "look at me" thread, make it good.

not only was this a waste of bandwidth, but so many shots were just the out takes of what I assume was a core shot somewhere in there. pick the best, if your not sure, pick a random shot.

It's one thing to toss 25 slightly different variations on flickr or something, I mean my friends like to pick out the photo they look least defective in, but to pust them to a website for everyone to see is just dumb. In a side note, a lot of people consider posting 25 variations of any photo even in your flickr just stupid, so take that for what it's worth to you.

Don't take it personally, anytime you post 50 less than mouth watering photos (and that goes for anyone on this site or any site no matter how good they are) you are going to not get a great response.

Finally, while I haven't climbed much since tearing my ACL followed by ACL surg over the last 2 years, but that crack looks pretty nice. Unless the rock is horrible, which it doesn't look like to my highly untrained eye, why in gods name would you place bolts. Looks like it would take some decent size stoppers.

The clouds are great (and I'd spare so much of the water to buy more of the clouds--a case where one wants MUCH more width in the photo than one frame (unless panoramic) gives!). That wave near top (w/one person distractingly in it) is a nice shape in opposed breaking tops (too bad we don't see more of the right side). And the hillside residence with great night sky is great; here, I think a wider view to get more sky would be good (and cropping the result maybe to squareness, to keep it the width of the town).

---------- And, with an LX3 handy, I macro-photo'd your falling climber's tie-Fig.8, which betrays a few things ... .

--------- As for "waste of bandwidth", I'll give my piles of *poo* to all those who like to QUOTE entire long passages gratuitously--like adding a "yes" after the gazillion quoted parts. Oh boy, so glad to re-read THAT... !

But surely you've got a bigger set of pics than should be lumped into a post.

Sorry USN, I wasn't a big fan of the pics. This is really nothing personal, but I thought that most of them were uninteresting, A few had potential to be very good (the second pic particularly) but the subject was always centered (use the rule of thirds). I also have to say that the climbing pics should go in the worst pics of RC.com thread, they are horribly posed, the subject is half way out of the pic in several cases, and they are shot from bad positions.

This isn't to put you down, I just think that you could do a lot better with some more practice.

2nd to the too much saturation. Try just hitting "Auto Levels" in photoshop, that would avoid a lot of your overexposures, such as: the half sunny side of the storm over the beach picture, the blue shirt of your climber, the highway lights, a number of your skies and clouds, and the sun reflecting off the water/sand around the rocks. Overexposures suck and pretty much ruin the shot, no matter how good the composition.

In pretty much every photo you are either centering the subject or using the rule of thirds, which is just kind of bland, it screams I just read an internet forum on photo composition.

A few of the shots are uniquely captured though maybe cliche', i.e. water flowing over ledges (but they are lava ledges, so that makes them cool to me, since I've never been to HI), the sign on the boulder being pounded by the waves, etc. A few of these shots actually break away from your mold of composition, so they became more appealing.

Your climber looks "special". Ask him not to make dumb faces.

And yes, please pick the 1 best picture of a particular situation, 4 shots of the same rock with different water levels around it are boring.

The second shot I thought was pretty cool, as well as the third pic in the series of water draining into a small basin.

and for some reason I kinda liked the freeway shots. I think the second one is better but I can't be sure.

Oh and I know absolutly nothing about photography so these are just personal opinions based on a quick scroll through.

I do agree that the climbing shots are just god aweful though

one more thing. I kinda like having all these pics in one thread rather than someplace like flickr cause then its really easy to scroll through them once they are loaded (which for me took like 1 sec cause I'm at work on a crazy super fast mega connection)

Here's the thing. Some of your pictures are good, but a lot of them lack a reason for being. For instance, why did you take and post the close-up image of the black rock? What were you trying to accomplish and convey with it? Were you trying to show that the rock was black or porous? Another example is one of the first images with the clouds and the ocean. I think you were trying to show the ocean at sunset and that there were some pretty cool clouds on the horizon. To make the photo better in this case would be to add something to the foreground and make the clouds more obvious and the ocean less obtrusive. Once you start thinking along these lines your photos will improve.

I spend a lot of time belaying hang dogers... So yes when I am belaying someone for 45 min who climbs from bolt to bolt on a 5.9 I do rather enjoy my big wall harness. :P :) I have a sport harness as well but even on 5.12's I find it gives me absolutely no noticeable advantage over the larger harness and thus see no reason to use it.